EDMONTON – Hopper bottom grain trucks may mean less shoveling, but they don’t necessarily mean less hassle during the busy harvest season – until now.
Like other farmers, Jim Grose found that swinging an auger under a hopper bottom grain truck was a two-person job.
As one person inched the truck forward into place, another slowly swung the grain auger into position under the truck while trying to keep the auger from under the truck tires.
While there are remote controls that allow the truck driver to swing the auger into place from the cab of the truck, those require more manoeuvering than Grose’s system.
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“Like all things, this comes from necessity,” said Grose, inventor of the Xtend, a retracting swing auger that won the Ag Innovation of the Year Award at the Farm and Ranch Show held in Edmonton earlier this month.
Instead of swinging the auger into place, the Xtend uses a hydraulic motor to extend the auger directly under the truck and retract it when the hopper is empty.
Grose, who has invented other farm products from his Rodono Industries farm shop near Clive, Alta., said his invention saves time normally spent trying to line up the auger under the truck’s hopper bottom.
Super B grain trucks are great for hauling grain long distances but can be frustrating to unload in a farmyard, he added.
“This makes it just as easy to handle grain as a single trailer,” he said.
“You don’t need a second person to get the swing arm underneath.”
Last fall was the first season the Xtend auger was used to load grain coming off the field.
“We had lots of bushels through.”
Grose developed the original drawings several years ago, but a fire in the farm shop delayed manufacturing.
The auger comes in widths from 10 to 16 inches and can be adapted to fit most existing augers with a change of an adapter ring.
